Criticism of Christian missionary in Ahmet Midhat Efendi's work titled Defense

Ahmet Midhat Efendi is a versatile writer who has Works in many fields. As writer who lived in the last periods of the Ottoman state in the 19th century, he did not remain silent against the missionary activities of that period. He wrote the refusal, which he called the defense, to defend Islam. Ahmet Midhat Efendi states that he wrote his work to highlight the missionary activities, to respond to the claims of the missionaries, to reveal that Christianity was corrupted, and to defend religion of Islam. The aim of the study; In this work, which was written in Ottoman Turkish, the missionary activities in the recent history, the evidence used by the author in the defense of Islam and the points where he criticizes the Christian missionary are to be revealed. This work consists of an introduction and two parts. In the introduction, information about the purpose, importance and scope of the study is given. In the first chapter, Ahmet Midhat Efendi's life and works are explained. In the second part, Ahmet Midhat Efendi's view of Christianity was explained and the arguments he used while criticizing the Christian missionary were tried to be revealed. According to the result obtained from the study; Ahmet Midhat Efendi tried to reveal the distorted aspects of Christianity. He gave extensive information about the life of the apostles during and after the time of Jesus. He emphasized that the apostles did not carry out the preaching activity and that the true Christianity was lost. He pointed out that the spread of Christianity took place through wars. He states that no verse was conveyed to the apostles by Jesus, so the Gospels were written later. Therefore, he argues that the Bibles are not reliable. He proved with the evidence he showed from the Bibles that the Christian understanding of divinity was problematic and that the unity of three persons could not be accepted. He revealed that the position of Jesus in Christianity is different from the position of Jesus in the understanding of Islam. There, he uses the "Christ of the Christians" in most parts of his work.